Anycast is a network addressing and routing scheme whereby multiple servers used to provide a given application use the same anycast Internet Protocol (IP) address, despite being in different physical locations. The anycast network infrastructure routes data packets that are associated with a service from a client to a nearest location of the service, according to the network topology. Anycast can be used to load balance traffic across multiple service nodes while providing optimal routing to the nearest point on the network having the anycast IP address.
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